Run Over and Flattened

If there are any remaining Redskins fans amongst the burgundy and gold faithful who thinks this team deserves to even be mentioned among the teams contending for a playoff spot, you’re either completely delusional or simply allergic to reality.

Look, it’s one thing if you keep losing heart breakers week after week. As a fan, you can always rationalize that, with a bounce here or there, the outcome could have been completely different. Clean up the mistakes, cut down on the penalties, and we could have won that game. There’s something to hold on to, going forward.

But the Redskins? We just got our butt’s kicked. Again. Yet another game at the Meadowlands (new or old, it’s all the same) where the Giants took us behind the woodshed and handed us a good old-fashioned ass whipping. They beat us like we stole something, and abused us worse than a rented mule.

Yet another team – a divisional foe, no less – provided us with another highly-visible public humiliation. I mean, it’s honestly getting to the point where NFC East teams are treating us like their homecoming opponent: the team you look forward to kicking the ever loving piss out of in front of your oldest alumni and biggest boosters.

In a league filled with parity and games being decided in the last couple of minutes week after week, this team is getting it’s ass handed to it repeatedly. Instead of being a heavyweight fighter slugging it out with another equally talented and motivated fighter, we’re nothing more than a punching bag for opponents to wail on at their whim.

It’s time to be brutally honest with ourselves: this team is as bad as any franchise in the NFL right now. Can you honestly say, with any real confidence, that there is a single team in the NFL that the Redskins are unequivocally better than? If you had to put your own life on the line, would you really bet on the Redskins to beat a team like the Panthers, 49ers, or Cardinals? Not a chance. Not right now.

Every single person associated with this franchise should be held accountable for this mockery we call the Redskins. The product and effort that this team has been putting out over the last few weeks is just downright appalling. As men, and as professionals, they continually show an appalling lack of dignity or pride in their weekly performance.

As with any organization, accountability starts at the top. This Redskins front office is like a corrupt political regime: plenty of overpaid people with cushy titles spouting tons of rhetoric while getting nothing done. They sit on past accomplishments and accolades but don’t do the job they’re currently getting paid a boatload of money to perform, and they laugh all the way to the bank while their constituents pull their hair out at the inaction and corruption of the people they depend on to make the decisions. At the end of the day, they judge their actions by how well their pockets are lined, instead of by the fruits of their labor.

Right now, someone needs to step up in front of Mike Shanahan and honestly question whether he feels like he’s earned a single solitary cent of his paycheck. Everyone knows Shanahan’s resume and previous body of work, but nobody gives a crap about it anymore when dealing with this travesty of a team we’ve been subjected to over the past few weeks.

Someone needs to ask Shanahan about whom he’s fooling with this 3-4 defense that can’t stop the run, can’t stop the pass, can’t generate any pass rush, can’t get the opposing offense off the field at any critical point, and can’t generate any turnovers. This defense does nothing effectively. NOTHING. And yet we keep trotting this failed experiment out on the field again, week after week, as other teams keep running right through them like an open tollbooth.

The honeymoon is over, Mike. We sided with you when you spent two draft picks to acquire Donovan McNabb, a quarterback well past his prime with only a small handful of productive seasons left (little did we know that “a small handful of productive seasons” was really eight games), because of your resume and track record. We sided with you against Albert Haynesworth, because he made it easy to do so. We sided with you – albeit very begrudgingly – when you decided to cut Devin Thomas, the only young and talented receiver we had on this team, even when his replacement included has-beens like Joey Galloway and Roydell Williams.

Now it’s time for answers.

We are sick and tired of trying to duct-tape together a broken product and squeezing out a few more years of mediocrity from this current group of overpaid underachievers. This team needs to be blown up and rebuilt completely. Let’s end this experiment of slapping together a bunch of retreads and swinging for a 9-7 record so we can just barely slip into the playoffs (and finish with a one-and-done). Blow this team up, start from scratch, and actually build a foundation for the future.

Everyone knows that while you’ve come back for one last shot at a Super Bowl title, your real motive was to hand the team over to your son after said Super Bowl run. You want to turn this team over to your son in a few years? Give him something to work with. Don’t leave the cupboard so laughably bare for him, the way Vinny Cerrato did for you.

This team is at a crossroads right now. They’re at the proverbial fork in the road. Mike Shanahan and Bruce Allen must make the difficult choice: Are they going to be like their predecessors, sticking their heads in the sand and convincing themselves they’re only a player or two away from being “a contender?” Or are they going to see the truth, that all the teams who consider themselves contenders today (or at least have a bright future on the horizon) took their lumps, built their teams through the draft, and sprinkled in role players in the right positions?

Only time will truly tell. But if history tells us anything, then the future looks as bleak as ever for the burgundy and gold faithful.